OCEANIA NEWSLETTER No. 80, December 2015 Published quarterly by Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies, Radboud University, P.O. Box 9104, 6500 HE Nijmegen, The Netherlands. Website: http://cpasru.nl/publications/oceania_newsletter. To receive or to stop receiving this newsletter, contact the CPAS at
[email protected]. CONTENTS Immeasurable Man: Skulls, Race and Science in the Dutch East Indies - reviewed by Anton Ploeg 1-2 Received 2-3 New Books 3-25 Recent Publications 25-36 IMMEASURABLE MAN: SKULLS, RACE AND SCIENCE IN THE DUTCH EAST INDIES - review by Anton Ploeg Sysling, Fenneke. 2015. De onmeetbare mens: Schedels, ras en wetenschap in Nederlands-Indië [Immeasurable Man: Skulls, Race and Science in the Dutch East Indies]. Nijmegen: Vantilt. 191 pages; maps; plates; index. ISBN: 978-9460042195 (pb). In Dutch. It seems appropriate to me to translate the Dutch term 'wetenschap' in the sub-title of Sysling's book with 'science', since the discipline concerned is physical anthropology and its practitioners were careful to provide objective data: a multitude of standardized measurements of the human body. Sysling focuses on three Dutch practitioners, from successive generations: Herman ten Kate (1858-1931), Johan Kleiweg de Zwaan (1875- 1971) and Hendrik Bijlmer (1890-1959). As was usual in the discipline (p. 5), all three were physicians. Kleiweg de Zwaan was the most prominent academic: in 1916 he became a professor in the University of Amsterdam, a position he held until his retirement in 1939. In 1925 he published De rassen van de Indische archipel [Races of the (Dutch East) Indian Archipelago], a review of physical anthropological work there written for the general public.